Rationally Speaking

In Pursuit of Positive Skepticism

Massimo Pigliucci is a Professor of Philosophy at CUNY and author of Denying Evolution: Creationism, Scientism, and the Nature of Science. See full bio

May 22, 2009

On torture

It seems to me astounding that we have to have a debate at all, instead of an open and speedy prosecution of the people responsible for the policy, up to and including former President W. (and let’s not get started on the even more obvious issue of the false pretense under which the Iraq war was started). Still, if we have to have a debate, let’s have a rational one (see how naive I am after all these years?). Read More

May 19, 2009

Is Stanley Fish smarter than Richard Dawkins?

I could write a book refuting the nonsense regularly expounded by New York Time’s columnist Stanley Fish. Oh, wait, I almost havewritten a book about it! Read More

May 11, 2009

Religion is atheists’ fault, study says

The success of religion may be the fault of non-believers (or, if you look at it the other way around, thank god for the atheists!). Read More

May 5, 2009

Conservatives lack sense of humor, study finds

I have always thought that conservatives have a much less developed sense of humor than liberals. While it is easy to list a large number of liberal-leaning comedians, for instance, it is hard to come up with more than a handful of conservative ones. Read More

April 28, 2009

Is Richard Dawkins really that naive?

Richard Dawkins doesn’t usually strike me as being naive, but one has to wonder when Dawkins abandons himself to the following sort of writing about his favorite topic these days, the incompatibility between science and religion, on his web site: Read More

April 25, 2009

When Republicans don’t know squat about science, and proud of it

If you are even a teensy little bit into reason and rationality, then you are likely to wince every time you open a newspaper, surf the web or watch tv. The wince of the week definitely came from an interview that ABC’s George Stephanopoulos conducted with GOP House opposition leader John Boehner. Read More

April 21, 2009

Enough complaining about blogs, FaceBook and Twitter

I am getting a bit tired of all this complaining about our alleged obsession with connectivity and how dehumanizing it is. It doesn’t help, of course, that most of the complainers have their own blogs, FaceBook or Twitter accounts, like Russell Bishop over at the Huffington Post. The fact that I often find out about these rants because someone posts them on FaceBook, or that I read them on my Kindle (where I get the Post delivered several times a day) just adds deliciousness to the irony. Read More

April 14, 2009

Faith and Reason

One of the constantly bewildering aspects of living on planet Earth is the assumption that most human beings seem to make that faith (usually, but not necessarily, the religious variety) is a virtue. This bizarre attitude — just to add insult to injury — often comes coupled with the equally strange idea that somehow too much reason is bad for you. Why? Read More

April 9, 2009

Philosophy never ends

Today I was forwarded by several people a really bad and confused op-ed piece by New York Times columnist David Brooks. It is entitled “The End of Philosophy,” which naturally raised my baloney detector level to yellow alert. Brooks’ main argument is that philosophy’s approach to ethics is “hyper-rational,” and that it does not appreciate the fundamental role of the emotions. Odd, considering that it was David Hume (the 18th century Scottish philosopher, 1711-1776) who famously wrote about how reason and emotion interplay to give meaning to our lives (a much, much earlier statement than the very similar sentiment attributed by Brooks to psychologist Jonathan Haidt). Read More

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